Yoga Mama 

Everybody Loves a Yoga Mama

Julia King, 38, is part of an emerging class of women whom marketers call Yoga Mamas. These middle- and upper-income mothers are more style- and brand-conscious than their parents. AOL news has this story today.

"No matter their income, they spend like lottery winners on their babies and toddlers. In the process, they're revolutionizing the baby-products market and forcing manufacturers and retailers of all sizes to adjust.

From the start, they are focused on active, fashionable, and fit pregnancies, and then on the fitness and well-being of their offspring. They tend to be more educated and have more disposable income to spend on fewer children than past generations. As a result, the $27 billion infant and preschool products business is growing more than 4% per year, faster than the overall toy, apparel, and furniture industries.

Marketers say the evidence is in the brisk sales of premium-priced products: Burt's Bees Buttermilk lotion is $8.99 and a top seller at drugstore.com; $11.50 buys a 2 oz. jar of popular California Baby Calendula Cream at Whole Foods Market; Italian leather toddler shoes are $129 at Nordstrom; Bugaboo strollers Yoga moms love for ergonomic design and brand cachet are $700 and up.

Bigger spending is fed by an attitudinal change toward motherhood. Superfit mothers-to-be flaunt their bulging bellies in cropped tops and low-rise jeans. "Soccer moms are passé," says author Katherine Stewart, whose recently published first novel, The Yoga Mamas, follows a group of fashion-obsessed mothers through spas and baby boutiques. "They are no longer content to be lunchbox-packers, and want to make motherhood a personal statement.

"Because they are so heavily networked -- socially and technologically. When a campaign gets one as an advocate, says Joe Trippi, it's really getting a message to dozens more...The Yoga mom is the center of the megaphone today."

Phages: A New Way to Fight Bad Germs

Back in June I was amazed at this story in Wired about phages, bacteria-eating viruses that could be the answer to antibiotic resistance. The first treatment to use the therapy could be available this year.

"Half a century ago, antibiotics revolutionized medicine by turning many once-deadly infections like tuberculosis into minor impediments. But overuse is rapidly rendering antibiotics ineffective, and scientists know they need a replacement fast. One of the most promising options is one that's been used in Eastern Europe and Russia for decades: bacteriophage therapy

One potential drawback is that phage therapies might be too specific for widespread use against infection, according to Carl Merril, a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health. For example, one phage might work for one strain of Streptococcus pneumoniae (the most common type of pneumonia) but not for the 27 others.

One solution is to make a "cocktail" treatment containing several phages, but it remains to be seen how useful that approach will be.

The beauty of antibiotics was that any one antibiotic worked for many different types of infection. But it is also turning into their downfall, because they also kill good bacteria that humans need to remain healthy. Moreover, bacteria are good at finding ways to outsmart the drugs.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 2 million people in the United States acquire an infection while in a hospital every year, and 90,000 of them die. More than 70 percent of the bacteria that cause these infections are resistant to at least one of the antibiotics commonly used to treat them.

Phage therapies are at the opposite end of the spectrum. They kill the bacteria they're meant to almost without fail, and bacteria don't become resistant nearly as often. However, Merril cautioned, "Given the narrow host range of phage, you can't use it like penicillin."

"The Offering"--A Meaningless Reach

Maureen Dowd writes well in today's NY Times about paying for dinner checks.

"After Googling and Bikramming to get ready for a first dinner date, a modern girl will end the evening with the Offering, an insincere bid to help pay the check. "They make like they are heading into their bag after a meal, but it is a dodge," Marc Santora, a 30-year-old Metro reporter for The Times, says. "They know you will stop them before a credit card can be drawn. If you don't, they hold it against you."

One of my girlfriends, a TV producer in New York, told me much the same thing: "If you offer, and they accept, then it's over."

Jurassic feminists shudder at the retro implication of a quid profiterole. But it doesn't matter if the woman is making as much money as the man, or more, she expects him to pay, both to prove her desirability and as a way of signaling romance - something that's more confusing in a dating culture rife with casual hookups and group activities. (Once beyond the initial testing phase and settled in a relationship, of course, she can pony up more.)

When I asked a young man at my gym how he and his lawyer girlfriend were going to divide the costs on a California vacation, he looked askance. "She never offers," he replied. "And I like paying for her." It is, as one guy said, "one of the few remaining ways we can demonstrate our manhood."

Company Insurance--GoNOMAD is Moving Up!

Sunday morning and we turned back the clocks, so we get even more out of this sunny fall day. Life is good. I filled out the forms and wrote the check so on Monday I am signing up our three employees at GoNOMAD.com for Blue Cross Health Insurance.

This is a huge milestone for us. How many travel websites offer this benefit? We once were a part-time hobby, a small little business that was run out of my basement. I pined for the day I could do GoNOMAD full time, and every day left my cozy home office to sell products for somebody else. I am glad to say that today I've left my tee shirt selling days behind me, and now that we're offering real benefits and have a storefront, we're on our way to building a business that will grow and prosper.

I was in touch with the founder of GoNOMAD, Lauryn Axelrod, and her comment was "Wow!" when she heard about our company insurance plan. That feels good!

Life on Your Own

Sam hangs out the window of his new studio apartment in downtown Greenfield. 

There is no joy like seeing your young son move into his own apartment. It's an exciting time for Sam, and in his face and his motions, you see hope, and pride that he managed to get this place, and talkativeness, the likes of which I am not used to. We went to the grocery store too, stocking up, and we made plans for dinner Sunday night, when he starts a new job down at a Candle distribution center. He is making his way, using a bike, walking distance to everything, and working the night shift, and getting used to living above a bakery in a small New England town.

My Distant Relative, Cousin Edmund Wilson

An Army wound-dresser in World War I in France, writer Edmund Wilson said ``the war made me see. . . that respectable life is a living death.'' His parents' example may have had something to do with that observation, as well. In any case, through a life that ended in 1972, he managed to do exactly what he wanted to do most of the time. That was read, write, drink and fornicate. He married four times - writer Mary McCarthy was No. 3 - and had dozens of liaisons that he chronicled in a clinically detailed diary.

He seems to have possessed outsized appetites - for drink, work, sex and intellectual stimulation. He pursued topics that caught his imagination with the same zeal that he pursued women. To be free to do so, he was prepared to sacrifice steady income. He lived in a succession of squalid, rented rooms until an inheritance in his 50s allowed him to own a home. For seven years, he simply ceased paying income tax. When the Internal Revenue Service caught up with him and assessed a whopping penalty, he attacked them in a blistering polemic - The Cold War and the Income Tax.

Wilson was a longtime contributor to the New Republic, the Nation and The New Yorker. He hated teaching, was no good at it, and scorned most academics as timid and conventional. His work ethic amazed colleagues. Though he drank excessively for decades, he was at his desk each morning pushing forward. Once a subject possessed him, he'd consume all the available literature until he knew more than the professionals, then write his piece. Often, it was the last word."

Sure, it kills birds, but it won't kill you

Wendy Orent is the author of "Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease."

"It must seem like the sky is falling — that it's about to rain chaos and death as the dreaded H5N1 avian flu appears to close in.

Last spring, bird flu broke out in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. It spread to western China, Siberia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia in the summer. How did it travel half a continent? This means, say breathless news reports, that what happened in 1918 could happen again, this time with H5N1. But Peter Palese doesn't think so.

He is lab director at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where the technique that re-created the 1918 genes — known as reverse genetic engineering — was developed. He and associate Adolfo Garcia-Sastre contend that what the resurrected virus really shows is how supremely adapted it is — how well its parts fit together, how perfectly it works. The sublime malignance of the 1918 virus doesn't lie in one part but rather in how the genes function together. Evolution shaped this virus to be a sleek, effective killing machine.

We don't know what bird the genes came from originally. It wasn't a domestic duck, chicken or goose, because their flu strains are quite different. According to Jeffery Taubenberger, the senior researcher at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the 1918 flu originated in an unknown bird reservoir, one equally distant from American and Eurasian birds. "To me, it's from an unknown host, evolutionarily isolated from other birds," Taubenberger said last year. But the 1918 pandemic strain was different.

According to evolutionary biologist Paul W. Ewald of the University of Louisville, its lethality evolved in the trenches, the trucks, the trains and the hospitals of World War I. Infected soldiers were packed shoulder to shoulder with the healthy, and even the deadliest virus can jump from one host to another. The Western Front was a disease factory, and it manufactured the 1918 flu. The packed chicken farms of Asia are a close parallel. H5N1 evolved the same way as the 1918 flu did in the trenches."

"There Is No Internet--But We Have a Plan"

Time Magazine published this piece on North Korea.

"But any liberalization could lead to a loss of the absolute political control enjoyed by Kim. The dilemma is evident during a visit to the Kumsung Educational Institute. Boys recruited from around the country are learning English and computer skills beneath portraits of Kim and his father, state founder Kim Il Sung. In one class, students are studying Microsoft PowerPoint on Taiwanese computers, and 10-year-old Chun In Hyo shyly tells a visitor: "I will be a scientist."

Down the hall, an older student poring over a Cambridge English text says he likes football star David Beckham. The students are well-behaved and bright, and their English is as good as anything you would find in Seoul or Tokyo. Vice Principal Bak Ryong Gil says the youngsters are learning to use the Internet. Really, we ask, can they access it? No, he explains, they can only look at select material downloaded at the country's main computer-research center. "There is no Internet," says Bak, "but we have a plan." He says he can't tell us more.

Indeed, censorship remains pervasive. After the school's musicians put on a stirring performance, belting out rousing odes to school and country backed by electric guitars, Rhee Jin Hyuk, a spiky haired drummer, mentions that he owns an MP3 player. But he claims not to have heard of rap music, or even the Beatles. The only tunes he plays are North Korea's version of pop, a chirpy, heavily synthesized sort of muzak that sounds like it was composed in the 1950s. "I want to be a musician in a military propaganda unit,"he tells us.

Choe, our minder, says his country is developing its own style of music. Closing his eyes and clasping his hands to his heart, he launches into a song about a girl who is popular with the boys because she is a model worker. "We call it juche music," he says.

What's Goin' On

Random purely personal things that are on my mind. My feared liver numbers went from 67 to 43, and 24-17. That is all very good. Because of my strict two drink per week regimen, I've been able to significantly improve my liver function. So this is going to be around for a while, which is making me feel good. Going to visit Carlsbad CA in February, along with a visit to Silicon Valley for meetings. Going to Malaysia at the end of January to Sarawak. Off to NYC on Nov 1 to visit with European tourism boards. Did an interview on Around the World with Arthur and Barney, about my time in the desert of Chile. MTV called us and wanted us to help promote a new show--True Lives Going on Vacation--and so did another paper, who ended up deciding to run a story about us.

My son is happy in his new studio apartment, but lost his job today...another temporary assignment. Like a prizefighter, he always gets up. He loves his place there, and I ensured him that he wasn't going to lose it. he just needed to get another walking distance job. My grandson is sick, and when Kate tries to get the goo out of his nose, he cries.

College Life in the North: A little Colder

Today's Recorder newspaper included an AP story about how the thousands of college students who were uprooted by Katrina are faring in their new temporary colleges.

"An estimated 75,000 college students were displaced from New Orleans by the storm. Many are still in the South, or at least at schools close to family. But others are temporarily enrolled at colleges far from home, both geographically and culturally.

Amherst College took its visitors shopping for the winter clothes they suddenly needed, and it is even paying for them to fly home for Thanksgiving. Their Amherst seminars have been a nice change of pace in both structure and content. 'We discussed homosexuality, which is definitely a big taboo at Xavier, being Catholic and all that,' said one student.

Another student admitted "all of us here are getting a little bit of cabin fever...we're so used to going to the movies and having so many opportunities in a big city, going to a mall...there's definitely a division between the Chicago students and the New Orleans students, said another transplant. "They're from two different cultures."

eBay is in Google's Way

Google's already outsize ambitions appeared to balloon even bigger on Oct. 25 with the news that it's apparently testing something called Google Base. The test site, spotted by sharp-eyed Web surfers in Europe, indicate that Google aims to solicit people to post all manner of content on its site. But what got people's attention were the specific examples, such as classified-ad listings for real estate. Watch out eBay! Business week had this story.

POTENT AMMO. It's not as crazy as it may sound to the casual Web surfer. In essence, notes an insider. "Classifieds are product search." So it fits neatly into Google's stated goal of organizing the world's information and making it more accessible. And, of course, taking tidy profit off the top.

GIVE IT A TRY? Google has also been working on a payment system for months. Few companies other than PayPal -- including eBay -- have been able to pull that off, and no one knows how far along Google is. But Brown sees Google Base potentially cutting into eBay's pricing power -- if Google's service were free -- and into the auction giant's growth. Brown already has a sell rating on eBay's stock because he's concerned about growth and large eBay sellers moving off the site.

Google will have to break down roadblocks, though, before Google Base poses a meaningful threat to eBay or any other rivals. It appears Google Base would put Google into the content business -- that is, content it would own, not just point to. That could rankle partners, specifically the classified-ad sites such as Monster.com from which Google recently has been asking for feeds. "It starts to put them in heavy conflict with their partners," says Craig Donato, CEO of Oodle, a new search engine for classifieds, itself a would-be competitor.

Sky Hooks from Magic

Magic Johnson dazzled the world when he wore Laker Purple, and took the team through four world championships in the 1980s. The star was in Springfield's Alden Baptist Church yesterday, reported the Republican.

"Today, Magic takes only two of the 26 pills routinely used to treat the HIV virus, and is quick to dispel the rumors that he takes medicine that is unavailable to the public or that he is cured of HIV. 'The virus is laying asleep in my body,' said the 6'9" Johnson. A young fan asked him if he would have left the game if the diagnosis had come in 2005 instead of 1991.

"If I knew then what I know now, I'd still be shooting sky hooks," Magic said, to a rousing applause.

Favorite Dubyaspeak Poll XXIX--Survey Says!

If you had to choose, which of these Dubya originals would you say is your favorite?
www.dubyaspeak.com polled their audience.

I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.
167 (19.2%)

Part of the strategy is to call free nations together to form a coalition, to share information and to find people before they hurt.
43 (4.9%)

It breaks my heart to think about a family weeping over the loss of a loved one. I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place.
81 (9.3%)

I want to thank the President and the CEO of Constellation Energy, Mayo Shattuck. That's a pretty cool first name, isn't it, Mayo. Pass the Mayo.
579 (66.6%)

Total: 870 votes

The Battle for the Mp3 Phone

Frank Rose wrote in Wired last week.

"Consumers want an iPod phone that will play any song, anytime, anywhere. Just four little problems: the cell carriers, the record labels, the handset makers, and Apple itself. The inside story of why the ROKR went wrong.* (*And what it will take to make a truly rocking music phone.)

One sign that the ROKR, the new iTunes phone from Motorola, might not live up to expectations came during its September unveiling ceremony at San Francisco's Moscone Center. In the midst of an elaborate presentation of new products, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, faltered in his onstage demonstration of one of the ROKR's most crucial features: effortless switching from MP3 player to phone and back again.

After taking a call from a colleague, he went back to … nothing. Silence. "Well," he said, looking perplexed, "I'm supposed to be able to resume the music right back to where it was. …" Then: "Oops! I hit the wrong button." Maybe not the ROKR's fault, but since Jobs' presentations are usually flawless, certainly not a good omen.

When Jobs and Ed Zander, CEO of Motorola, announced 15 months ago that the two companies were going to partner on a new phone, people imagined a hybrid of two of the coolest products in existence: Apple's iPod and Moto's RAZR. For months the new gizmo glimmered mirage-like on gadget sites - ever promised, never delivered. When it finally did show up, it bore the unmistakable hump of a committee camel. Not sleek like an iPod, not slim like a RAZR - and when you saw the fine print, you discovered that you can't use it to buy music over the airwaves, that it's painfully slow at loading songs from iTunes on your computer, and that it comes pre-hobbled with a 100-song limit.

No matter how much of its 512 megabytes of flash memory you have left, you can't load any more tracks onto the thing. The consensus: disappointing."

Talking About Health Insurance at the Library

Tonight I joined many other members of Hidden-tech to learn about health insurance for small businesses in Massachusetts. There is a state program that will subsidize most of your employee's monthly costs, it was presented by Simon Muil, a Brit who recalled his days using the single payer plan run by Britain. T

he audience of mostly self-employed computer people had lots of questions, the panel included Ellen Story, a State Rep from Amherst, a sharp guy in a suit from Wellington Management, who handles company health plans, and a woman from the Nathan Agencies. All of these folks were weary about the decrease in service and increase in prices, weary because every year the prices go up, and they probably get complaints from their clients about it.

Adding a health plan for three people at GoNOMAD will be a big step. If I can get the state of MA to help pay, that makes it a little easier for us to offer it. A woman stood up and said she only wanted catastrophic insurance, that she didn't want to pay five hundred twenty five dollars a month to go to the doctor. She'd rather pay that out of her own pocket.

One person in the group suggested that if we got a Single Payer Health plan, deducted from our paychecks, then it would be better than the patchwork system we have now, where so many people are unisured, and go to the emergency room...and we end up paying, as taxpayers, in a less direct way. She said it's like a car insurance program. If you crash they pay, but you still have to put the gas and the oil in the tank.

Tunisian View: Kashmir Victims Ignored

"The huge divide between the world’s rich and poor is well-illustrated by the yawning gap in assistance offered those who suffer nature’s wrath. According to this op-ed article from Tunisia’s Tunis Hebdo, the failure of the international community to deal more equitably with disaster victims is a sad reflection of the world we live in. The website watchingamerica.com provides a global view of the USA.

The devastation of this terrifying earthquake would have been far less severe if the buildings in this area of Pakistan, well-known for its seismic instability, were built according the criteria and materials suited to such a region. But because of the abysmal management of the relief operation and the completely unprecedented extent of the devastation, the opposition will take advantage of the dissatisfaction in the country to flay President Musharraf and to weaken him, a man who has gone against the majority of his own government to offer his outstretched hand to that bloodthirsty man, [Ariel] Sharon.

Moreover, several of his Pakistani detractors believe very strongly that this earthquake is heaven’s penalty for the intrigues of their leader. The same applies to Bush, according to these same informers, in regard to the torments of "Katrina" as well as his loss of popularity, because he displeased God by deciding to occupy Iraq militarily.

None of these surreal calculations answer to any objective criterion. But this simply indicates that many people apportion some share of the blame for these events to the blunders of our decision makers. These include some in their own ranks, such as the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, renowned for his outspokenness. According to him, all of the recent major catastrophes that have occurred, in Pakistan, in the United States or in Central America, "are the work of capitalism!!"

The Biggest WiFi Hotspot in the World

925M is a website about telecommunications, that included this info today.

"Bet you thought San Fran was getting the best Wi-fi vantage. Well, apparently according to a CNN article today, the world's largest hotspot, a wireless cloud that stretches over 700 square miles of landscape, is not in any metropolitan city. Instead it blankets a wide-stretched onion field in dry and desolate Hermiston, Oregon.

According to the report, after hearing word that the tumble weed town wasn’t of interest to local phone company Qwest Communication International, entrepreneur Fred Ziari built the $5 million Wi-fi cloud out of pocket. The service is free so you have to wonder how he plans on recovering his losses. CNN explains that “Ziari is recovering the investment through contracts with more than 30 city and county agencies, as well as big farms such as Hale's, whose onion empire supplies over two-thirds of the red onions used by the Subway sandwich chain. Morrow County, for instance, pays $180,000 a year for Ziari's service.”

As for Ziari’s response to this Wi-fi launch he said, “Internet service is only a small part of it. The same wireless system is used for surveillance, for intelligent traffic system, for intelligent transportation, for telemedicine and for distance education.”

Why Do We Quit So Often?

Below are two of the top ten reasons that people quit their jobs, according to AOL today.

#3 Insufficient Recognition or Appreciation
Percent Responding: 34.2%

"There is no recognition of my creative talent, training, or skills."
The three major portions of an employee's total rewards package are compensation, benefits, and the work experience. The work experience includes things like company culture, dress code, and how employees are recognized and appreciated for individual contributions and accomplishments. The fact that 34.2% of dissatisfied employees are disgruntled because of insufficient recognition or appreciation shows the importance of elements of the work experience, such as employee recognition programs. This proves that rewarding top performers with cash or gift certificates, or even just a pat on the back, goes a long way toward improving employee retention rates.


#4 Boredom
Percent Responding: 20.1%

"My job duties have gone from being challenging to boring."
20.1% of dissatisfied employees are unhappy because of boredom. There is only so much socializing with coworkers, surfing the Internet, or simply spacing out that an employee can do before it's time to find a new job.

The July 2005 AOL/Salary.com study on Wasted Time At Work revealed that the average American worker admitted to frittering away 2.09 hours per 8-hour workday, not including lunch and scheduled break-time. However, employees expressed that they are not always to blame for this wasted time. 33.2% of respondents cited lack of work as their biggest reason for wasting time.

The New Head of the Big Bad Fed

Meet Ben Bernanke, he's the next head of the Fed.

"A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University in 1975, he received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. During his years in Boston, he focused on the economic underpinnings of the Great Depression and the losing track record of the city's beloved baseball team, the Red Sox.

"Economics is a very difficult subject," Bernanke once said. "I've compared it to trying to learn how to repair a car when the engine is running."

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid issued a statement signaling the type of questions Bernanke might expect at his confirmation hearings.

"I look forward to the confirmation hearings to learn more about Mr. Bernanke's views on how the Federal Reserve should steer our economy free from political influence and interference," he said."

The president mentioned Bernanke's speeches - "widely admired for their keen insight and clear, simple language."

In other words, he doesn't talk like Greenspan.

While "irrational exuberance" and the housing market's "signs of froth" were Greenspan's calling cards - language that left economists and the public parsing his words - Bernanke favors plain terminology.

In Sony's Own Words

Sony Stark has a great blog, it really moves along at a fast pace. A recent dispatch:

"Mahatma Ghandi referred to them as "God's Children" and after eating, sleeping and meditating on their turf, I can see why. They are warm, kind, respectful and proud. They are called Untouchables or Dalits, a Sanskrit word meaning 'to split, crack, or open'. Figuratively, they are persons who are cut, split, broken, or torn asunder, scattered and destroyed. They live below the four castes, treated with social discrimination and brutal violence. It's one of the last contemporary forms of slavery; rooted in an ancient system that's condemned people to dehumanizing conditions for over 2000 years.

Of the 300 million Dalits in India, we met 1,047 in Kodur, a village of limited electricity, no running water, no sanitation, no phone, TV, school or medical services.

They live in mud huts with thatch roofs and eat from the land. But don't mistake them as poor; they're not beggers. They're rich with curiosity, intellect, creativity, humility and generosity. Nothing but friendship was exchanged and I couldn't stop hugging these so-called 'untouchables'. The next evening I ate dinner with a greedy real-estate mogul who had a lousy disposition and a poor excuse for the Dalit's situation. "I don't feel sorry for them" he argued, "I can't because in today's unstable economy, I could be there tomorrow". Right......"

How Does My Labia Look?

The Detroit MetroTimes ran a long story about the hottest thing in cosmetic surgery. Designer vaginas.

"During Kim’s consultation, Dr. Berenholz asks her a number of frank questions about her ability to orgasm, before and after childbirth. “I’m just really loose down there,” she says with a shrug. Having finished with his questions, Berenholz begins conducting his exam, speaking gently and telling Kim exactly what he’s doing as he probes her vagina with a speculum and conducts a rectal exam. A flash of surprise shows up on his face.

Berenholz finishes the exam, and tells Kim that if he had to classify her on a scale from normal to slightly relaxed to very relaxed, he would classify her as normal.

Kim looks shocked. “You think so?” she asks, unconvinced. “I know so,” Berenholz assures her.

He then gently suggests that the problem may lie with her husband. He refers Kim to urodynamic testing, to treat her issue of stress incontinence, but says she has no need for LVR, or Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation.

“You really don’t think so?” she asks again, looking perplexed and rather disappointed. After a moment, she wonders, “Well, maybe he’s got a problem.”

Despite the fact that she’s just learned she’s normal, and won’t have to pay nearly $7,000 to have her vagina surgically altered, Kim looks almost crestfallen.

“It happens a lot,” Berenholz’s assistant assures her. “Because we’re women, we’ll see a doctor when we think something is wrong, but men are very prideful …”

“There are many women who’ve had more than three or four children who have a very fine sex life,” Wilhelm says. “It doesn’t mean because your sex life is no longer enjoyable it’s because you’ve had three kids and your vagina is stretching. That’s a lot easier to fix than looking to yourself or your relationships.”

Olsen Look-alikes Spew Racist Hate in Song

ABC News reported on a pair of twins who have made a career out racist hate.
Thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede have one album out, another on the way, a music video, and lots of fans.

They may remind you another famous pair of singers, the Olsen Twins, and the girls say they like that. But unlike the Olsens, who built a media empire on their fun-loving, squeaky-clean image, Lamb and Lynx are cultivating a much darker personna. They are white nationalists and use their talents to preach a message of hate.

Known as "Prussian Blue" — a nod to their German heritage and bright blue eyes — the girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine.

"We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white … we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."

Lynx and Lamb have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April. "They need to have the background to understand why certain things are happening," said April, a stay-at-home mom who no longer lives with the twins' father. "I'm going to give them, give them my opinion just like any, any parent would."

April's father surrounds the family with symbols of his beliefs — specifically the Nazi swastika. It appears on his belt buckle, on the side of his pick-up truck and he's even registered it as his cattle brand with the Bureau of Livestock Identification.

"Because it's provocative," explains April of the cattle brand, "to him he thinks it's important as a symbol of freedom of speech that he can use it as his cattle brand."

"The Mother of All Unfunded Mandates"

The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications. The New York Times featured this piece today.

"Technology experts retained by the schools estimated that it could cost universities at least $7 billion just to buy the Internet switches and routers necessary for compliance. That figure does not include installation or the costs of hiring and training staff to oversee the sophisticated circuitry around the clock, as the law requires, the experts said. "This is the mother of all unfunded mandates," Mr. Hartle said.

Even the lowest estimates of compliance costs would, on average, increase annual tuition at most American universities by some $450, at a time when rising education costs are already a sore point with parents and members of Congress, Mr. Hartle said.
At New York University, for instance, the order would require the installation of thousands of new devices in more than 100 buildings around Manhattan, be they small switches in a wiring closet or large aggregation routers that pull data together from many sites and send it over the Internet, said Doug Carlson, the university's executive director of communications and computing services.

"Back of the envelope, this would cost us many millions of dollars," Mr. Carlson said."

The Lives of the Super Obese

We flipped the channels on Friday night and found a fascinating program on Discovery called Super Obese. How could we resist? The show featured five profiles of super obese people, all currently in a clinic to help them reduce their staggering weight. The stories were similar, and all of them painful yet compelling to watch. One woman with a pretty face who weighed about 800 had a leg that accounted for at least 50 of these pounds.

She cried when she spoke about how people viewed her, and said that there was a vascular problem so that all of this weight collected in her left leg. The one appendage was about two feet wide, startling to look at, in the show they showed how they cut about 24 pounds of it off.

Another obese man just wanted to be able to get into his truck. He was about 840 pounds when he entered the clinic, and had dropped about 250 pounds--enough to get behind the wheel and return to his family.

The last man profiled was the biggest, he really couldn't even move on his own, but had shed hundreds of pounds. He was hugged by Richard Simmons, who visited the clinic, and told him tearfully that he had managed to walk 550 feet that day.

A Toastmaster At Work

Cindy had me up before the sun this morning. It was cozy in the bed with the flannel sheets, but it is my birthday today, so it was time to have our coffee and open presents. She gave me a beautiful assortment of new clothes, very tasteful and classy. So nice to have a partner who gets you just what you want!

I have another task before me, I need to write a wedding toast. Our friends Trudy and Graham are being married today at 5 pm all the way in Allentown PA. A torturous drive awaits us, long way down, long way back. Ugh. But they are wonderful people who appreciate that we are coming....and I've come to believe that the effort you make, to a wedding, a funeral, or a christening, comes back to you tenfold. That's why I always write a toast, not just spew some trite words out, I want the person who asked me to give a toast to feel that I put something into it. Here goes...

Secret New Project Being Hatched--Right Here!

We are hatching a million dollar scheme here at GoNOMAD/Computer Cleaners. We are going to surprise the locals with a technology-driven way for a nearby city to save thousands per month and offer citizens something that most of them want, and soon all of them will want.

Expanding my business has always been a priority, and we are going to seize the moment and become partners with a company that is on the cliched cutting edge of this technology. Instead of selling for others I will push this new frontier and find markets that pay far more and go much deeper towards a truly revolutionary end result.

You'll see it all here as we unroll and make progress. I am going to a tradeshow oin Boston on Friday to meet vendors and learn more about this tantalizing and lucrative project.

Ad Clutter Fear Prompts Solo Sponsorships

This week's edition of the CBS current-affairs program will run longer news segments, and fewer ads, as a result of an unusual sponsorship deal with Philips Electronics. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Amsterdam-based consumer electronics company says it is paying about $2 million to be the sole national sponsor of the program. Aside from spots promoting CBS's coming shows, and local ads sold by CBS stations, only Philips ads will appear on the show.

"There is more content, and less clutter," says Jeff Fager, executive producer of "60 Minutes."

The deal is the latest example of an advertiser aligning itself with a specific media outlet to get consumer attention. Over the summer, Target bought up all the ad pages in one issue of Condé Nast Publications' the New Yorker magazine. Ford Motor, for a number of years, sponsored commercial-free season debuts of "24" on News Corp.'s Fox.

Advertisers used to plaster the same commercial across many TV channels and the same print ad in major publications. But as audiences have fragmented among television, the Internet and other media, advertisers are getting more choosy. When they find a media property that attracts a desirable crowd, "there is more appetite to dominate" than in the past, says Charlie Rutman, chief executive of MPG North America, a Havas media-buying firm.

Eyewitness: Hit by a Truck on Graves St.

Outside in the October chill there was a commotion. A large truck had just struck a bicyclist on Graves St. A crowd gathered, little kids tittered about, and a man lay on the pavement, not moving. A police officer cradled his head, another man in uniform went to the back of the ambulance to take out the stretcher. The man didn't move, couldn't move.

The boys came running up past me, toward three more girls, all the same height. These little people were all under five feet. They chatted and decided to leave in a group.

I walked back to my ofice, thinking about the story in the paper about encouraging biking, to save gas. I guess getting hit by trucks is just one of the hazards.

Hitchhiking ---It's BACK!

Today's Republican included this story about promoting hitchhiking in the Pioneer Valley. It does make sense to share our big cars when we drive alone to the store. In Chile we were told that index and middle finger out means you will pay someone to pick you up and give you a ride; traditional thumb up means you want a free lift.

Molly O'Hale, a proponent of the plan, said both drivers and pedestrians who participate would fill out an application that includes questions about their residential and driving status and criminal background. Those who pass the screening process would be given placards indicating that they are a part of the program...I guess Safe would be another way to put it.

Drivers would display their placards somewhere on a window of their vehicle. Hitch hikers would hold theirs up at designated stop sites. The placards would have the photo IDs and numbers which would be registered in a database so that their authenticity could be verified. Fifty people have so far showed up for meetings in support of the idea.

"It's ride sharing," said Russ Sienkiewicz, Chief, "we're talking about reducing the number of cars on the road. It will probably serve that part of the population without cars."

Francis Crowe, famous local activist, believes it will enhance a sense of community..."In the post carbon world, we're going to have to depend on one another," she said.

Lascar Volcano and the Miscanti Lagoon--13500 feet up in Chile

 
 

D'oh! In Arabic is Still D'oh!

The Simpsons are coming to the Arab world, but there are a few changes in the works. AOL news writes today about how Fox's cash cow will play on Arab TV.

"Homer Simpson's ubiquitous Duff beer will now be soda in the Arab version of the show. Hot dogs will become Egyptian beef sausages, and donuts will become popular Arab cookies called "kahk." Moe's Bar has been completely written out of "Al Shamshoon."

With characters who are Jewish (like Krusty the Clown), Hindu (like Kwik-E-Mart owner Apu) and Christian (like the family's pastor, Rev. Lovejoy), Al Jean — "The Simpsons" executive producer — says those changes mean they aren't "The Simpsons" anymore.

"If he doesn't drink and eat bacon and generally act like a pig — which I guess is also against Islam — then it's not Homer," Jean said.

Some on the Arab street agree. Many bloggers have also expressed discontent.
"It's different," one Arab viewer told ABC News. "We are a totally different culture, so you can't be talking about the same subject and in the same way."

One thing didn't change, according to Costandi. Omar Shamshoon still says "D'oh!"

Why, Oh Why, Did We Film Her in a Canoe?

In what would have been a beautifully choreographed segment, Ms. Kosinski was reporting live about flooding in Wayne, N.J., in a canoe that was floating down a submerged suburban thoroughfare. The NY Observer and Poynter had the story.

“Eight days of rain, and some neighborhoods don’t even look like neighborhoods anymore,” she told Today viewers at the top of the 7 o’clock hour. “Little rivers with their own strong currents have taken over the streets, and people are getting out, any way they can.”

And it would have worked, too—the artful image of a correspondent Huck Finn–ing her way through a Jersey subdivision—had two guys in hip-waders not walked through the shot moments later, at 7:02 a.m., as if on cue. Water sloshed around their ankles. Ms. Kosinski looked like a grown woman in a nice outfit paddling her way around the kiddie pool.

“When it happened, it was funny and embarrassing, and I just thought, ‘O.K., this probably looks a little bad, or it looks unusual at least, to the people who are watching,’” Ms. Kosinski told The Observer four days after the segment aired.

Swatting Down Cameras In North Korea

Dan Schoor just got back from North Korea, and blogged about it.

"When I pointed my camera at the large picture of Kim Il-sung that hung over the stadium, a woman in uniform swatted my camera down, resulting in a blurry shot of the chairs. I noted the stern, disapproving stares from at least a couple of them and I hoped they weren't about to take my camera - fortunately they didn't.

We exited the performance and saw a table selling "Arirang" posters - no North Koreans seemed to be buying them, but we Americans quickly descended upon the sellers like hungry imperialists and purchased every last one within minutes. Quite a scene. I bought two.

These sellers, and others in the DPRK, took euros, dollars, and Chinese RMB - we weren't allowed to have and never saw actual North Korean won. Exchange rates changed slightly from place to place with no clear pattern - usually a dollar was worth less than a euro (the current actual exchange rate) but some sellers treat them as being equal in value. A price might be quoted as ten euro, and when one of us would say he/she had dollars, ten dollars would be accepted. Sometimes the RMB was considered to be 10 euro, sometimes more. But we were in North Korea - odd exchange rates were one of the least unusual things about being there.

We got back to the hotel around 10pm and were told we were allowed to walk within 100 meters of the front door but no further. I had never experienced such a situation in my life - a very weird feeling to be told that you are locked down at home for the night like a child. But I knew this was part of the deal in traveling to North Korea."

Carpooling Cool in the Back Forty

An informational meeting to help West County people set up carpools is set for next Wednesday, Oct. 26, at 6:30 p.m. at Stillwaters Restaurant, reported the Recorder.

The meeting, planned by Stillwaters owner Michael Phelps, aims to introduce selectmen, business and religious leaders and anyone else interested to MassRides, a state program offering computer matching to help promote car pooling.

In West County, where the population is spread out and where 77 percent of workers drive alone to work, according to the 2000 Census figures, Phelps figured carpooling could help put some money back in people’s pockets, and back into the local economy.

“When you don’t have pocket money, the first things to go are going out to eat, going out to a movie and getting presents for people,” the business owner said.

The result would be the state’s first community-based carpooling initiative, built on people registering with the free carpool match service. He will provide free refreshments at the meeting and hopes other businesses will join him in offering discounts to people who sign up to share rides. The nine-town sub-region has about 10,500 people spread out over more than 200 square miles, but the state initiative’s technology makes it easy to generate potential matches.

MassRides, which primarily works with employers, including colleges, to promote ride-sharing, helps people tailor carpooling around their schedules, destinations and common meeting places, said Phelps, who sent out more than 300 invitations to the event.

A Porcine Symbol of Common Sense

Roddy Scheer writes in emagazine about our President's new concern for energy conservation, now that the Gulf's refineries are down. They've even introduced a new theme, "the Energy Hog," complete with smiling porcine mascot.

Don't be an Energy Hog! 

"The situation we are facing is a very different one than we faced in the past," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told reporters. "This is in response to significant damage that has been done to the country's energy infrastructure."

But those environmentalists critical of the Bush administration for not taking more substantive steps should keep in mind that shoring up the nation's oil supply is the White House's priority here, not conservation. Underscoring the fact that the administration's call for conservation is only a short-term effort, President Bush continued to push for approval to build several more oil refineries around the United States. "It ought to be clear to everybody," Bush commented last week, "that this country needs to build more refining capacity to be able to deal with the issues of tight supply."

But clearly longer-term conservation tactics, such as raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for vehicles and boosting sources of renewable energy, are not a big part of the Bush plan."

Public art in Valparaiso, Chile, and photographer Paul Shoul. 

Bulgarian Nurses Facing Death over AIDS deaths

Ahhh to be back in the U.S. where newspapers are printed in English! Picked up today's NY Times in the airport and took a lot of time during my Miami layover to read.

In Libya, five nurses and a doctor are being held in jail and a death sentence looms. They are being accused of infecting 420 children with the AIDS virus. But the nurses tell a different story, that unsanitary conditions in Libya's hospitals caused the infections, and they are trying desperately to get the world's attention. Libya is still basking in the glow of international praise for giving up its weapons program....and now the government there has come up with a way out.

They want Bulgaria to pay $10 million for each case of mistaken infection. They liken this to the huge payout they had to make after their agents bombed the Pan Am flight back in 1988. To the nurses, this is absurd....but the Libyans think they've come up with a great new way to raise a lot of dough.

Elise, Carla, Paul and Peter

Travel is the best way to get to know somebody. That and working in the same office for a while. I got to know four great people over the past ten days as we traveled up and down Chile on a press trip.

Carla Waldemar is a name I knew from my days back at Transitions Abroad. She is a seasoned travel writer, she has a wonderfully keen sense of humor and is very well read and adapts to whatever situation is before her. She runs seven miles every day, and appears to have a hollow leg where she puts the food that she is always in the mood for.

Elise Rana is the travel editor for TNT in London, and is a 29-year-old dynamo. She has the quick wit of a modern Brit, has been to just about every country we can think of, and loves horror movies.

Paul Shoul is a big fish in a small pond, Northampton, MA is his bailiwick. He is a pro shooter with a booming laugh, and he made us all crack up with his famous stories and sense of adventure and the absurd.

Peter Heller is a writer and adventurer who I got to know again, after a 25 year absense. With his walking sticks, pipe and cowboy hat, he cuts a dapper figure. He listens with an intensity that is engaging, and you can tell he loves his life.

Valparaiso, Glittering in the Sun

Flying home tonight and today, a long journey from Santiago, Chile to Miami and later to JFK. The flight wasn't full, so I was able to have two seats to myself. Still, none of us on this trip could get any sleep despite this extra seat bonus.

This trip to explore Chile was highlighted by our last day, a day trip to sunny Valparaiso and Vina del Mar on the Pacific coast. A few of us said we could imagine living in this hilly, friendly beautiful old port city. The beaches were windy, a few people played in the sea, and we had a huge snack in the casino overlooking the glittering ocean.

On the approach to the Miami runway, the jet suddenly pulled back up as we were no more than ten feet from the ground. The pilot came on and told us that another plane was in the way. Phew! Now as I blog at this early hour of 6:30 am, sucking power from an airport plug, I watch airport screeners here make people remove their shoes and walk through a big grey box. They stay inside the box, and air whooshes through, the sound like tires being inflated. Thanks Osama, for making our travel life so damn complicated!

Theroux´s Dismal Take on the Spanish Coast

Reading a book on the plane by notorious grump Paul Theroux called ¨The Pillars of Hercules,¨where he travels from one end of Gibraltar to the other, the long way. After leaving the rock, he travels to Spain and has this to say.

¨The utterly blighted landscape of the Spanish coast--Europe´s vacationland, a vile straggling sandbox--begins about here, north of Marbella, and continues, with occasional breaks, all the way up the zigzag shore to France. The meretriciousness, the cheapo appeal, the rankness of this chain of grease-spots is so well-known it is superflous for me to describe it, and it is beyond satire. So why bother?

But several aspects of this reeking vulgarity interested me. The first was that the debased urbanization on this coast seemed entirely foreign, as though the whole holiday business had been foisted on Spain by outside investors hoping to cash in.
In full sunshine it might have had a cheap and cheerful carnival atmosphere, but under gray skies it hovered, a grotesque malignancy, sad and horrible, that was somewhere between tragedy and farce. And Spain seemed distant.¨

The Geysers and Flamingoes in San Pedro de Atacama

San Pedro de Atacama is a green oasis in the vast and arid northern sector of Chile, you can see the town miles away as you drive the rail-straight route from the airport at Calama. Calama is a mining town, the world´s biggest open-pit copper mine is here, and our guide told us that getting a job in the mine is like hitting the jackpot. You get the best wages, free health care and prescriptions, your family is taken care of and you practically have to kill somebody to get fired. In fact the few times the union has struck, it has been hours not days, before being resolved. Job openings occur only upon employee deaths.

But we passed out of the grimy miner´s town and 2 hours later were in a wonderful place, San Pedro, a town of 2400 or so with adobe houses, and a lovely town square with shady trees. The restaurants are all on one main drag, barely wide enough for a car to pass. Most of them feature an inner square with a firepit, open to the air. Cool music plays, sort of jazzy ambience, mixed with some soul, and everything was good and cheap. The main thing people do here is leave town--to see the geysers, which if you start at 4 am and drive 2.5 hours over stoney terrible roads, present themselves in full steaming glory between 7 and 9 am.

We also walked out to see flamingoes in a salt lake bed and hiked a mountain pass at 13,000 feet, revived by coca tea in a little low slung tea house-restaurant on the road back. Chile is full of wonderful places and awesome panoramas, fantastic!

The Beautiful Game

We flew back from the one-horse town of Balcameda tonight, leaving behind our driver Jaime who had to backtrack five hours over the one-lane Austral road to his house in the woods. As we approached Santiago, the highways signs overhead read ´good luck Chile,´and ´´ít is possible,´rooting in public for the home soccer team, now playing against Ecuador in a match that might bring them into the World Cup. But our guide Victor told us, in a typically Chilean self-deprecating fashion, that it is not all it seems. ´I love football, but this year, we didn´t do well, so actually, for us to win, Uraguay and Colombia both have to lose for Chile to move ahead.

Everywhere the game is on, men cleaning up the banquet hall have a little radio blaring the game, they are yelling at the radio, and the bar echoes with the sounds of soccer on the big screen. Far off you hear people singing chants about Chile´s team. The soccer stadium here in Santiago seats 75,000, the rest must be content to listen or watch...and cross their fingers for their neighbors to beat Argentina.

Hydropower Success Stories from Chile

We visited two hydroelectric plants today, both owned by entrepreneur lodge owners who needed a way to heat and light their ecolodges in remote national parks in Patagonia, Chile. Both hoteliers were eager to show me their handiwork.

Heidi took me out in the rain (wearing the requisite ´wellies´or tall rubber boots) to a shack by the side of the Austral Road. A twelve inch wide pipe sluiced water down from a mountain into the whirring confines of the shack. Upon entering we saw three four-foot long sets of fan belts, they looked like something from a car, and they turned methodically while the generator whirred loudly below the floor. This system, used by El Pangue eco lodge, supplies more than enough juice for all of the eight cabins, a dormitory and even heat for the pool and jacuzzi. Sadly, the utilities in Chile don´t buy the ample excess power back.

The second installation was smaller, just 2 kw, and backed up with a gas generator. But this is all they need at Fiorda Queulat ecolodge to keep their lights and power on. Owner Patricio pointed way up a mountainside, this is where he draws the water from. It all goes into a filter tank and then into his little Chinese made system.

The Farmers Who Married Sisters

We climbed a long hill up a rutty driveway up and up and around and up again to the top of a hill overlooking a beautiful lake and huge mountains on either side. We were here to have lunch with Theobaldo Doerno, the owner of a farm that offers ágrotourism´here in Patagonia. Theo came to this place in the 1950s with his brother, the government offered free land to settlers who could clear the land and live in this place where there were no roads. They married sisters and began clearing the land. Today they offer guests these sweeping views and the food that they grow and the meat from their animals.

Theobaldo is a lean trim man who works out by walking the hilly grounds and doing farmwork. He said that they used to be able to cut down trees and burn to clear the land, but now, they need government permits--and since his son is a forest ranger he can´t cut any corners. It rains a lot here this time of year, but they are sporadic sprinkles, not downpours, and the sun often keeps shining while the raindrops fall. There is actually more than one road here in this land; but only one road goes north to south; and everybodys house is off of the same road:

Driving the Austral Road in Patagonia

Here is a ´´nuevo entrar´´ written from El Pangue, an eco-lodge in the rainforest of Patagonia Chile. This is a rainy and wonderful place, outside it is very green and horses are grazing on the lawn. There is a small hydro plant on the grounds where they make their own electricity and guests stay in small cabanas built of native wood. Yesterday we drove for six hours on most of the length of the Austral road, the only road in the 100,000 square miles of this part of Chile. That´s it no more roads just THE road.

It is a rutty, bumpy, boulder-filled road, but until 1982 there was not even that. The only way to get from here to Puerto Montt was by ferry boat. There are plans to pave this legendary and crucial roadway and already they are widening it and moving the tree stumps and boulders to the side, but the job is overwhelming and they have to heat the concrete with wood fires.

We stopped for yerba mate tea along the road, it is taken in a tiny cup with a bong-like metal stem that goes down into the powdery, sugary tea and you get just a few sips. All you need since down here the Yerba is strong with special herbs that keep you alert and ready to face more time driving the Austral...just hope a big old truck isn´t coming to meet us as we crest that tall hill!

Meeting Peter Heller--25 Years Later

When I was a boy growing up in New Jersey, Peter Heller was my pal who lived in Brooklyn. He used to come out and visit us, and they called us 'city mouse and country mouse.' I have just reunited with this old friend, who I haven't seen since 1980, we are traveling together in Chile.

I didn't know what I'd think about Peter now, after only hearing bits and pieces through relatives about what he was doing. He's a writer and adventurer, truly so, he goes on long assignments to write stories for Outside and National Geographic Adventure magazine. Despite being a big-name writer who has won two Lowell Thomas awards, the best thing about Pete is that he is real. He is inquisitive, funny, thoughtful, well read and listens as well as he talks. He is a gentle man who sees the fun in everything, and is still curious about the world and the people he meets.

It has been wonderful getting to know him again after all of these years, and to realize that we've picked up right where we left off. But this time we're a little grayer and wiser, and we're not sleeping in bunk beds at my parent's house.

Exploring Patagonia

We have been in Chile for just a few days, and it seems like much longer. We flew this morning from Santiago to Balcameda, a tiny spot on the Argentinian border in the pampas. We then set out over windswept roads the entire width of this 104 km wide country to the port of Chacabuco, where ferries take cargo and passengers down the coast toward the tip. The sun was fearsome, we were told that this time of year the hole in the ozone makes the solar radiation even worse.

Our guide Luisa Ludwig told us that all of the trees that once dotted the hillsides had been cut down in the '30s and '40s by settlers, who wanted to plant. Sadly, this left about 7 million stumps, and the few rows of planted pines can't make up for the terrible loss. As we drove toward the sea, we passed sad towns full of shacks, where laborors for the salmon farms live, entertained by bars such as "the Scent of a Women," and the Zodiak club. The air smells like fish, it reminded Peter Heller of Alaska.

But the Patgonian landscape was strikingly beautiful and wide open, and far off we could see the white coated peaks of the Andes. We passed many rivers and tall waterfalls, and hiked in a 600-acre privately owned park. Our lunch was a big one. They brought us big plates with every kind of seafood including conger and hake and dessert of lemon pie and super sweet chestnuts. Walking it off felt good, our guide showed us trees with thorns that go only about five feet up--since predators can't reach much higher.

FedEx's Secret: Empty Jets In the Air

We jumped into a Mercedes taxi in Santiago, Chile, this afternoon and in the back seat flap we found a convenient NY Times news digest waiting for us. Among the day's news was an item about the "FedEX Economy, evidence that the speed with which American business responds to different crises is what keeps us growing.

"The local crew made a call to a sprawling, low-slung room here at [FedEX's Memphis] headquarters, where people hunch over computer screens showing weather maps and flight plans, and asked for help from the five empty FedEX jets that roam over the U.S. every night.

David Leonhardt believes that no other company embodies American businesses ability to adapt to calamities like wars, hurricanes, rising interest rates and still grow every year more than this example: FedEX having a fleet of empty jets available to pick up cargo wherever it waits, is why we have 'micro recessions' instead of 1929 style crashes.

What Tina Brown Wants to Read

From Tina Brown's recent Washington Post column on the lack of juicy memoirs being written by former and current Bush staffers.

"And maybe a Bush memoir will give us a road map at least to some of the mysterious gaps and silences of the past five years. What was really going on during the missing hours on 9/11 aboard Air Force One, or in the interlude after Election Day 2000 when he vanished from sight and then emerged talking as if he were already president?

I want to know about that lazy hidden summer of 2001 when the Aug. 6 presidential daily briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." moldered in his in box, and why the governor of Louisiana couldn't find him when Hurricane Katrina was devastating the Gulf Coast. I want chapter and verse on the incident with the invasive pretzel. I want to deduce from parsing the punctuation the precise moment in the war in Iraq when his mood changed from swaggering certainty to the suppressed panic that now hovers at the corners of his mouth every time he goes into the herky-jerky routine of The War! On Terror! I want to know when the president first knew that the Valerie Plame leak was going to cause the long arm of the law to reach into the heart of his inner circle.

Bush these days seems more and more like Fredo Corleone in "The Godfather: Part II," wrestling with barely hidden rage and anxiety and relying more and more on the balm of loyal consiglieri who he believes won't give him up. It could make for a great memoir. Or better still . . . a novel. There's an amazing story inside that white box of a black box, full of shrieking."

Kent gets ready for lobster in Martha's Vineyard last summer. 

The Sign Says...

Our new sign on the Interstate Highway 91 North. 

Billboard advertising has always been exciting to me. I believe there is no better way to publicize a business than a nice-looking sign on a busy highway. I went out with the signmakers today and counted the cars whizzing past as we erected this 8 foot sign--30 cars passed by every minute. WOW! Let's see if my hunch is correct. I hope so.

I am off on a trip tomorrow, heading for Chile to write a story for GoNOMAD.com. I will leave my troops positioned to handle a lot of phone calls and hopefully, a lot of new business, when the sign begins to work.

So I'm driving to work this morning, and this dick pulls out in front of me... 

Getting Older

Sometimes you get jokes by email. Eric Jayne sent me a few...

...I've sure gotten old. I've had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement,
new knees. Fought prostate cancer and diabetes. I'm half blind, can't hear
anything quieter than a jet engine, take 40 different medications that make
me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. Have bouts with dementia. Have
poor circulation; hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. Can't remember if
I'm 85 or 92. Have lost all my friends. But, thank God, I still have my
driver's license.

bada bing...

...THE SENILITY PRAYER Grant me the senility to forget the people I never
liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight
to tell the difference.

bada bong

...I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor's
permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. I decided to take an
aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class
was over

What's On O'Reilly's Mind These Days

This month's Wired brought a trove of interesting profiles, including a piece by Steven Levy about Tim O'Reilly, who became famous in computer circles by founding a company that publishes manuals and books about software. O'Reilly, who lives in Sebastopol, CA, is big on participation, and spots trends that lie ahead. Currently on his radar:

*VoIP, making telephone calls over the 'Net. He sees this as 'completely undermining telephone companies and cell phone carriers.

*DIY O'Reilly publishes a quarterly magazine called "Make," where readers get ideas on stuff they can make, or hack, and he's planning a 'Maker Faire,' a Woodstock for Gyro Gearloose types' where people who love to tinker and create can come together.

*The Participation Era O'Reilly is very big on collective efforts, and how the audience's strengths can be put to use. 'He always asks start-up businesses, 'what are you doing to harness the intelligence of your users?

*Geography-based mash-ups Using GPS to blend different elements of websites similar to how musicians take old songs and recreate them as new. Example: housingmaps.com uses info from craigslist to display Google maps of apartments for rent.

Wanna Buy a Really Cool Jet?

Carl Hoffman wrote a profile of Don Kirlin in this month's issue of Wired. The opening photo showed Kirlin's hangar, stocked with fighter jets from the former Soviet Union and Romania.

"Kirlin's collection began as a rich man's game to buy the baddest toys money can buy. Then he realized there were others who coveted the planes as much as he did. So he started a business, Air USA, to sell the L-39s to doctors and executives looking for a nifty flying sports car with twin ejection seats, capable of aerobic loops and rolls and approaching the speed of sound.

As Kirlin puts it, why plod about at 120 mph in a $300,000 Cessna when you can fly four times as fast in an L-39 that costs the same and looks a hundred times sexier? "Look at this," he says, whipping open the forward avionics bay in the nose of an L-39. "We strip out the old stuff, put in light American avionics, save 800 pounds, and there's enough room for a set of golf clubs."

Oops, I guess You're Not Really a Terrorist

A Milwaukee-based petroleum company filed a defamation lawsuit against the parent company of Fond du Lac’s daily newspaper last week on claims an article published in July wrongly inferred a connection with Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists and damaged its business.

"According to the civil complaint, a newspaper reporter attributed false statements to a Department of Homeland Security official regarding former Fond du Lac resident and gas station owner Faryad Hussain. The Pakistani man had been deported after running a marriage scam, and the North Main Street Citgo station attained new ownership. AAP Petroleum leases and operates the business.

Senior Special Agent Jeff Stillings was attributed in the newspaper as believing Hussain “to be one of the plotters of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and an agent for Osama bin Laden.” The newspaper the next day reported from a statement issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the agent actually referred to Hussain as “an applauder.”

The July 28 article included a photograph of the gas station. Its caption included the address of the store, information on Hussain and said the store is “now under new ownership.”

The complaint states that references to Hussain as a terrorist, a plotter or an agent of bin Laden are false and defamatory, and that AAP Petroleum was also defamed due to the proximity of the Citgo photograph to the article."

A Computer for the Rest of the World

AMD says said it will partner with RadioShack to bring low-priced computers to the developing world. The device, called the Personal Internet Communicator, was originally developed for markets underserved by the computer industry and is widely available in Mexico, India, Brazil, and the Caribbean. BusinessWeek.

The idea was to make something simple, durable and reliable. At $300, it's only $100 cheaper than a barebones PC. It can be used for simple PC-like chores, like surfing the Web and checking e-mail. Such simplicity appealed to RadioShack, which sees the device as a way to market to the technophobic.

Chief Executive Hector Ruiz's "50x15" initiative, which aims to get 50% of the world connected to the Internet by 2015. Ruiz, an immigrant from Mexico, says it's by no means charity, but a for-profit venture. AMD donated about 400 of the computers to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, and has seen increasing demand for them in the U.S. "Even our own employees were asking how they could get one for their own homes," says Billy Edwards, AMD's chief innovation officer.

The company has sold more than 1,000 of them and will market them in China and Turkey in the coming quarter.

Testing Out Canine Chick Magnets

New York Magazine recently ran a piece on which types of dogs attract the most women.
Here are some of their scientific results.
"Roo, the Australian cattle-dog puppy:
In the lobby of Animal Care and Control, Roo immediately pressed his front paws onto me and licked my face. On East 86th Street, my pointy-eared wingman elicited a shriek when he tried to lick the face of a woman selling books from a card table. But then Kristina, a doe-eyed 21-year-old brunette, stopped her stroll and giggled, “Hello, baby” to Roo and “Hello” to me. If a woman likes being licked by a puppy, she’s my sort. Overall, the adoption-ready Roo (for information, call 311) wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t Hugo either.

Moca, the golden retriever, and Ernie Romeo, the long-haired dachshund: With little reaction garnered from the fairer sex, both purebred dogs offered good looks but little charm.

Rudy, the three-legged mutt:
Please do not consider sawing off a dog’s leg—but if you did, you’d improve your luck. Rudy, a mix of German shepherd, Airedale terrier, chow chow, and Rottweiler, has pretty much every scary dog in his pedigree. But sans a leg, he’s a female sympathy sponge. As we limped toward the dog run in Union Square, I heard from a bench, “Ooh, look at the poor fellow,” and turned to meet Alexandra, 29, a dimple-cheeked publishing intern visiting New York from Berlin. “He’s cute,” she said. So was she. Rudy’s drawback is that he inspires everyone, landing me in conversations with deliverymen, homeless folks, and megaphone preachers. He also did what a lot of dogs do: sniff indiscriminately at the genitals of other dogs.

Disco, the great dane:
Convinced no dog could out-magnetize Hugo, I tried a most unlikely rival: a pony-size Great Dane with a metal-spiked collar and bridge-cable leash. Three steps into Washington Square Park, we were surrounded by a group of female NYU undergrads, pressing in and petting Disco without fear. When I finally broke away, one called out, “I could ride him like a horse!” A few steps later I met Casey, a skinny, brown-eyed anthro major whom I wish I did not find so devastatingly attractive because she is 21 and I am barely still in my thirties.

“Physical or cultural anthro?” I asked.

“Cultural,” she replied. I always go for the cultural types, the ones who prefer living people to bones, who want to travel and live with the !Kung or Solomon Islanders for a spell. I felt guilty asking for Casey’s phone number, but she gave it to me all the same. Damn that Disco—he fetched trouble."

The New Words are Here!

On the list of new Webster words this year:

amuse-bouche (noun) 1984 : a small complimentary appetizer offered at some restaurants.

battle dress uniform (noun) 1982 : a military uniform for field service.

bikini wax (noun) 1985 : a procedure for removing pubic hair from the skin near the edge of the bottom half of a bikini by applying hot wax, covering the wax with a cloth to which the wax and hair adhere, and then peeling it off quickly.

brain freeze (noun) 1991 : a sudden shooting pain in the head caused by ingesting very cold food (as ice cream) or drink.

chick flick (noun) 1988 : a motion picture intended to appeal esp. to women.

civil union (noun) 1992 : the legal status that ensures to same-sex couples specified rights and responsibilities of married couples.

cybrarian (noun) 1992 : a person whose job is to find, collect, and manage information that is available on the World Wide Web.

DHS (abbreviation) : Department of Homeland Security.

hazmat (noun) 1980 : a material (as flammable or poisonous material) that would be a danger to life or to the environment if released without precautions.

hospitalist (noun) 1996 : a physician who specializes in treating hospitalized patients of other physicians in order to minimize the number of hospital visits by other physicians.

metadata (noun) 1983 : data that provides information about other data.

otology (noun) 1842 : a science that deals with the ear and its diseases.

retronym (noun) 1980 : a term consisting of a noun and a modifier which specifies the original meaning of the noun ["film camera" is a ~]

oteganography (noun) 1985 1 archaic : cryptography 2 : the art or practice of concealing a message, image, or file within another message, image or file

tide pool (noun) 1853 : a pool of salt water left (as in a rock basin) by an ebbing tide -- called also tidal pool

Wi-Fi (certification mark) : used to certify the interoperability of wireless computer networking devices

zaibatsu (noun) 1947 : a powerful financial and industrial conglomerate of Japan.

Becoming UnGoogleable

These unGoogleables don't post online, blog, publish or build web pages using their own names. They're careful about revealing information to businesses, belong to few organizations that can leak personal data, and never submit online résumés -- all common ways that Google captures your data. They spoke to Wired News only on condition that their names be changed for this story.

Agalia says she visits online poker sites, but always enters false data not tied to her true identity. She limits online purchases and favors websites vetted by Truste and other privacy-monitoring groups. Presented with a sweepstakes offer at Legoland, Agalia said she backed out when she was required to submit personal information.

"I try to protect myself from identity theft," says Agalia, who says a would-be thief tried to use her credit card number a few months ago but got the expiration date wrong. "I shred bills, I don't give out information and I don't talk to telemarketers."

Lindt's aversion to group activities may be the key to his absence from Google. Privacy activists note that many schools, civic groups and clubs publish attendance lists or minutes that end up on the web. Unthinking employers post their workers' names in online newsletters with no prior warning.

"Even if you are very careful, if someone else has that information and they post it, there is not much you can do but contact them and ask them to delete it," says Deborah Pierce, executive director of Privacy Activism.

Community activist George Rios says staying off Google helps protect his security. Rios cooks for Food Not Bombs, rides in Critical Mass and has been arrested many times for civil disobedience. To help keep authorities away from his political actions and his front door, Rios lives his life almost entirely off the information grid. He has no bank account, no phone, no credit cards. His roommates' names are on his utility bills.

"If you don't want to be found on Google, don't use your given name if you participate in chat or newsgroups, and for all of your e-mail addresses, don't use any part of your true name," advises Givens. "And for heaven sakes, have an unlisted phone number. Basic tip No. 1 to keep off Google is don't be listed in the White Pages."

The Signmaker's Dog

I visited with Duncan Ferguson today, he runs Ferguson Signs in a big garage on King St. in Northampton. I asked him what had happened to the Agway store down the street. He said that the new Honda dealership that has sprung up nearby had bought the land--and that it would be flattened to make room for the dealer's new parking lot.

Agway is a favorite store of mine, and many others. It smells like fertilizer, seed and earth. It has so many birdfeeders, and planting devices, and sack upon sack of seeds of every type. Sad to think this once thriving store will be the black asphalt with Hondas on top.

The signmaker has an elegant art. I love the haiku nature of it, having just a few seconds to catch the eye of a highway driver passing by, 24 hours a day. The billboard we are constructing on the Interstate involves a simple message. And a phone number.

Duncan is a soft spoken signmaker, low key, and wore a Red Sox cap as we sat and looked at the screen. He has a old Springer Spaniel who sits beneath him as he uses the computer to finish our rendering. I suggested the slow response from his computer was because it was a a bit out of date.

But, he said, "it's all broken in now."

Who's Afraid of a Monster? Not Many any More

Monster.com was once one of the best examples of how to make piles of money on the web. Founded by Jeff Taylor in 1994, he sold out to TMP Worldwide just a year later, and stayed on until now to run the job search listing company. Times are different now, reports Scott Kirshner in today's Boston Globe.

"But the news is not good for this once powerful company. New, more innovative websites are finding a better way to attract job prospects, "One problem that first generation websites like Monster and Hotjobs don't address, said Auren Hoffman, owner of KarmaOne a referral site, "is that their audience is made up entirely of people who are actively looking for a job. A vast percentage of the people who aren't looking are the people you want. It's extrememely hard to get to the people who aren't actively looking, and generally, that pool is much better."

The hot new competitors are SimplyHired.com and Indeed.com, who combine the listings from all of the job sites and then sell ads like Google does, next to the listings. So a graphic artist position may have ads for art supplies, and for graphic design courses. Google has paved the way for these 'contextually relevant ads," figuring sensibly that relevance increases results. "The market is moving toward a performance-based offering," said Simply Hired's Gautam Godhwani, so employers only pay a fee when the posting results in a hire.

But the big buzz, once again, is about Google. If and when The Big Guys unveil a job search function of their own, this could blow them all away. Because a company, like Google, with $7 billion in the bank can put fear in anyone--just ask Microsoft.

Egypt to Empty the Symbol of Bureaucracy

Egypt's bureaucracy just took a blow. The building that symbolizes long waits, frustrating government, and rubber stamped permits is being torn down. Today's Washington Post reported that downtown Cairo's Mugamma--Arabic for 'the complex,' will be torn down in June, moving the minstry offices into scattered offices in the suburbs.

"It just became a nuisance, instead of a central competant place to provide all kinds of citizen services, the Mugamma just became a mess," said Sami Saad, Cabinet secretary general for the government. "The Mugamma symbolizes Egypt's impenetrable bureaucracy, its emptying out will be the end of a symbol of the Egyption state, like tearing down a pyramid, said Mahmoud Sabit, a historian.

The new location for the 15 displaced ministries will be called Smart Village. Featuring blue tinted glass and exterior walls set at angles to suggest ancient pyramids, the new building complex won't have the crowds. It looks like an all inclusive resort at low season. 'We want to be e-friendly," said Saad, through e-government, we can empower our citizens. No more Mugammas ever again."

The Cost of Bringing Two Sides Back Together

Today's Boston Globe included a story by Colin Nickerson about the despair that is everywhere in the former East Germany, and the struggle there between the once prosperous west and their poor brothers in the East.

"Today marks the 15th anniversary of the unification of the collapsed communist East and Capitalist West into one democratic Germany. But few Germans see much cause for celebration. Both sides are feeling pain. Westerners have seen their once-booming economny stagnate, mainly because of the huge costs of stablizing the east. Public opinion polls indicate that attitudes toward the West--and toward democracy--have dramatically soured. People want a return to the old predictability and order. This capitalism seems a sort of chaos.

"Every year, reports Der Speigel magazine, 90 billion Euros (about $108.5 billion) are taken from the productive West German economy and pumped into East Germany, where it evaporates without much effect." The mood of the people is not good. It might be compared to the Reconstruction after the US Civil War, there you saw people suffering terrible difficulties. But does anyone question that it was necessary and good to maintain America as one nation?

Diving in a Fake Shark Submersible

Deep beneath the waves a weird fish has swallowed the grandson of the late Captain Jacques Cousteau, the ocean explorer. Fabien Cousteau, 36, is these days to be found inside the belly of a submersible built in the shape of a great white shark. Matthew Campbell wrote for Times on line in the UK. “The whole point,” says Cousteau, “is to fool them into thinking I am a shark.”

"The diver was also mindful of his father, Jean-Michel, who experimented with a remote-controlled shark in 1989. A less-sophisticated device, it failed to pass muster in the shark world and was demolished in a few mouthfuls.

The new mechanical shark — called Troy but nicknamed Sushi by some of Cousteau’s crew — has proved more successful. Real sharks tend to accept the intruder as a dominant female, says Cousteau, even though they may be baffled by some of its features. The mouth can open and close but does not eat. And Troy, unlike real sharks, is odourless and incapable of great bursts of speed.

Sadly, since the elder diver's death in 1997, the Cousteau Society, run by his widow — his second wife, a former flight attendant — has been plagued by a dwindling membership and legal disputes with other family members over rights to the name.

Such is the bad blood in the family that a spokesman for the Cousteau Society would not even comment on the Troy expedition. The Calypso, meanwhile, remains rusting in the port of La Rochelle in western France."

How I Made My Hair Turn Grey

Hillary August writes in the Yale Daily News about CNN's Anderson Cooper and his passion for crew.

"Instead of devoting extracurricular hours to honing his journalistic skills with one of the campus publications, Cooper devoted himself to the Yale crew team.

After failing to keep up with his teammates and having his dreams of rowing dashed, Cooper found another seat for himself at the front of the boat. At 5-feet-10., Cooper decided to go down to 125 pounds to make race weight as a coxswain.

"It was sort of absurd," Cooper said. "I was probably normally 145 or 150 regularly, so it was a little extreme looking back on it. It's probably why I went grey early. I think I've always been sort of intense or obsessive … I wanted to stick with the sport. I don't know if that was a very good idea, but it was a great experience."

Joel Furtek '90, Cooper's fellow coxswain, remarked on the physical rigor through with Cooper put himself to succeed as a coxswain. Furtek said that, at 5-foot-6, making weight was difficult enough for himself, and he could only imagine how hard it was for the lanky Cooper.

"He was definitely very driven and very intense," Furtek said. "I remember he would have to cut his weight very hard every week to get down to racing weight … So in addition to just practicing and all of that, he put his body in a world of hurt."

'Anderson always maintained equanimity," Card said. "How you see him on TV is the way he was then, too.'"

Wedding Day Don'ts

Today's NY Times style section includes this set of tales about weddings.

"Her most vivid recollection involved a particularly brutish upstaging during a lavish wedding, just as the newlyweds began their first dance. As the number started, the groom's college fraternity brothers, who were also on the wrestling team with him, invaded the dance floor.

"Here we have this gorgeous country club," she said. "The band is getting ready to start up, and all of the sudden you see these six guys come flying across the floor, going back and forth," in a series of wrestling exercises consisting of monkey rolls and throwbacks.

"And there's the bride and groom, who had rehearsed for weeks, standing there with their mouths gaping open."

Fortunately there are those times when what seem to be faux pas actually enhance a wedding. Elizabeth Felder McDermott, who lives in Charleston, S.C., took a flirtation with a visiting usher to extremes. In an attempt at dance-floor seduction, she spontaneously jumped into his arms, which were by no means open, causing him to fall and break his leg. Held captive in town to recuperate, the injured usher fell in love with her, and the two are now married, which happened to be the bride's plan from the start

The Man Who Thought The Bears Loved Him

Last night after crunchy, spicy tuna rolls at our favorite Japanese restaurant Moshi Moshi in Northampton, we went to the little Pleasant St. theater to see "Grizzly Man." Narrated by the filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his deep German accent, the film follows the travels and eventual demise of Tim Treadwell, self styled Man-bear, in Alaska's Kodiak Island.

The film is unique as a documentary, since it gets into the mind of the subject, and follows his spiral into madness. Herzog probes into his psyche and asks why Treadwell would allow himself to believe he was safe among these five-hundred pound carnivores. More than a few times we hear Treadwell in his own video footage speak about what may happen to him, and inevitably does, if he crossed the line.

His girlfriend has Amy a minor role, we see her in only three short takes among the hundreds of hours of videotapes left behind. But when the final day in October 2001 came, and the bears turned on Bear-Man, Amy refuses to run away when he is being devoured by a hungry bear. Among the remains was his detatched forearm with his watch still ticking.

Men Playing Cricket in North Amherst

Driving back in the bright September sun, I passed a group of dark skinned men playing cricket in North Amherst. One man stood in front of a stake and the other pitched at him as he held his large bat. Amherst was a beehive of human activity, there was an apple harvest festival and a young girl was belting out a tune with a band while two people among a throng danced. She was about 8 years old and had a strong unwavering voice.

Elsewhere, there were fireman who took people up a long long ladder in the sky, and tag sales on the common. Towns like this have a buzz, an energy, a youthful full kind of feeling. Like the strong coffee at the 'Sheep, Amherst is always the same...student filled and posters everywhere, advertising such a huge array of coming events. I met Kate and Nathan for a coffee this morning.

The Black Sheep was full of people with different uniforms; Bowdoin Football fans, Hampshire College female sophomores perking out at us; older people who looked vaguely familiar. I like walking around a college town this time of year, this is when New England is the best place on earth to be.